Question: How can we explain measurement to elementary students in both everyday life concepts and in school?
Answer: EVERY DAY LIFE: driving placed ie near far, Getting up or going to bed ie time , cooking food ie time in microwave SCHOOL: start off with most basic materials: paper clips, actual hand/feet and then progress to the units of measurement inches, feet, gallon, quart etc
One key to help students understand measuring is to help them concretely understand measuring.
Younger students have to understand a concrete way to measure an object or a distance.
Students need to understand measuring a length or distance with your hands or by taking steps is one way to measure something if you don't have a ruler or measuring tool.
Once students understand concretely how to measure something then they can get into harder measurements such as yards, miles or any distance. Also weight, mass, density and lengths in time and amounts for cooking and distributions. There are so many things that can be measured.
After physically measuring distances, weights, etc. as the teacher we will have to help students think about abstract measurements for things that cannot be measured. Such as weight of a car, or the weight of a box or object, or a distance between cars driving, how far someone runs. Measuring/estimating how long it takes to get somewhere or how much time in the day you will have to do a task. These are the things that students won't be able to pick up right away but after working with them they will hopefully start to think about these things. Ultimately these abstract measuring skills will be needed and also be used the rest of their lives.
Question: How can we explain measurement to elementary students in both everyday life concepts and in school?
Answer: EVERY DAY LIFE: driving placed ie near far, Getting up or going to bed ie time , cooking food ie time in microwave
SCHOOL: start off with most basic materials: paper clips, actual hand/feet and then progress to the units of measurement inches, feet, gallon, quart etc
One key to help students understand measuring is to help them concretely understand measuring.
Younger students have to understand a concrete way to measure an object or a distance.
Students need to understand measuring a length or distance with your hands or by taking steps is one way to measure something if you don't have a ruler or measuring tool.
Once students understand concretely how to measure something then they can get into harder measurements such as yards, miles or any distance. Also weight, mass, density and lengths in time and amounts for cooking and distributions. There are so many things that can be measured.
After physically measuring distances, weights, etc. as the teacher we will have to help students think about abstract measurements for things that cannot be measured. Such as weight of a car, or the weight of a box or object, or a distance between cars driving, how far someone runs. Measuring/estimating how long it takes to get somewhere or how much time in the day you will have to do a task. These are the things that students won't be able to pick up right away but after working with them they will hopefully start to think about these things. Ultimately these abstract measuring skills will be needed and also be used the rest of their lives.